


Scythe to the Harvest

by JuniperCypress



Category: Hades (Video Game 2018)
Genre: Blood and Injury, F/M, Hades (Video Game 2018) Spoilers, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Mild Gore, POV Thanatos (Hades Video Game), Than is Out for Blood, The House of Hades Has A Bad Time, Whump, heavy on the hurt, post-credits but not true end im not there yet
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-15
Updated: 2021-02-19
Packaged: 2021-03-17 10:34:51
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 4
Words: 5,746
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29470281
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/JuniperCypress/pseuds/JuniperCypress
Summary: For a Prince of the Underworld, death is never a danger. Life is.Zagreus doesn't come home.
Relationships: Thanatos/Zagreus (Hades Video Game), very brief megzag, very brief nyx/persephone and persephone/hades
Comments: 55
Kudos: 301





	1. Chapter 1

Like old times, the faces that emerge from the Pool of Styx are uniformly, universally mortal. The last godly countenance to come trudging up from its depths was that of its master, scowling in that particular foul temper only a defeat from his son could stir. Usually, for all his efforts, the son’s arrival in the Pool is never far behind the father’s.

If this were on the surface where time still holds domain, that would have been days ago.

He’s left, then. Just like he said he would. Thanatos is not going to chase him down this time.

He wonders if he will ever accept it. He certainly doesn’t understand it. The Queen is _here,_ after all, back home because of the Prince’s efforts. Did he think she alone would miraculously change the House into something it wasn’t? Was an existence here, with the dead, with Death, still not enough?

Thanatos keeps to his unending work. Nothing has really changed, after all. Gods have broken more for less; but that is not something for a servant of the House to say to its Queen.

“I thought you might know something, Thanatos,” she says softly, with more respect than she need give. “Not one death escapes you, and he’s had so many…I just don’t understand where he would go this time, it doesn’t make sense…”

Thanatos wants to tell her that it makes perfect sense if one simply remembers that Zagreus does whatever he wants, and thinks that everyone should do whatever they want, and damn all consequences. Instead he says, “Your majesty, I’ve never come for the Prince myself. His deaths have always been nearby enough for him to return by the Styx. If he falls somewhere beyond its grasp I will know, but for now I can only assume he is somewhere far away, and alive, and no doubt very well.”

The Queen is a bit too shrewd not to catch how short he is on those words. He sees that much in her sad smile. The worry lines in her kind, sun-leathered face look deep here in the Underworld.

“I hope you are right,” she says, and looks aside. “But the surface is not a kind place even for gods, Thanatos. My mother has made sure of that.”

He doesn’t know how to answer. It’s true, the surface has become Demeter’s domain, and she has become an old and pitiless goddess. His work is never done collecting all the souls who perish in her lands. If not for Zagreus promising to tell her nothing, he’d be just the type of fool to try and comfort that old frozen heart…

Would he dare break his promise, tell the goddess where her daughter is? Would she take the news well? What if she has found out by other means?

It’s an irrational thought. Zagreus is not completely devoid of common sense. And severe as the goddess might be, Thanatos cannot imagine she would harm him if she _had_ discovered him to be her grandson.

Anyway, the surface poses no real threat to a god of the Underworld. If a snowstorm or a bear does strike him down, Thanatos will bring him right back here to start all over and that will be it. No point in talking, no point in anger. No more back-and-forth with someone who clearly wants something else. Zagreus is gone, and obviously wants to stay that way.

But the Queen’s unease weighs on him, won’t let him leave it all alone. He thinks of a goddess grown suspicious, a pair of burning feet frozen and trapped. He thinks of gorgons that turn men to stone, labyrinths, witches with binding spells. Honestly, Zag could get lost in a plain old forest. Thanatos thinks of his grin and his kiss the last time they saw each other. “I’ll see you later,” he said.

He asks the King, once, quietly, to consider a search.

“Am I to strain our resources for a search party every time the Prince does as he pleases?” The god of the dead snorts in disdain. “He wishes to go? Our arrangement no longer satisfies him? Very well. I’ll not waste any more time on him than I already have.”

Thanatos sees the curl of the King’s shoulders over his parchments, the bitterness. He hesitates.

“My lord Hades,” he says, “I had the impression from the Queen that the surface is not a suitable place for him to stay. It is Demeter’s realm and she is…slow to give her trust.”

Hades lifts his dark, menacing gaze, half of Zag now looking back at him. The glowing eyes are unreadable. Thanatos is left to only wonder if the King heard the words he did not say.

“Understand this, Thanatos,” he says at last. “We are in no position to act rashly with any of the Olympians. Especially not Demeter. Either the boy understands that, or he doesn’t. No one in this House is to draw her attention any further, is that clear?”

It is clear. The Underworld and all its inhabitants could become involved if Demeter is not engaged with care. Hades moves slowly, or not at all. His son is no exception. Thanatos excuses himself.

As he passes the Pool of Styx, Hypnos is awake for once. He sits back on the recliner the Prince unwisely commissioned for him, watching the ripples of the river against the steps.

“Still no sign of him, huh?” He looks up with a shrug and a smile. “Well, nobody avoids this place forever! Maybe he’s just really taken a liking to all the fresh air up there.”

It takes so little for his twin to set him boiling over. Thanatos wants to round on him and snarl that the Prince can hardly breathe the air up there, that it smothers him in minutes. That he shouldn’t be up there, that he _can’t_. That he’s not coming back. That Hypnos needs to stop worrying and waiting around for someone who’s gone for good and get back to work. The words all contradict and stick in his throat. He passes on to the west hall in silence.

The aching truth is, he doesn’t believe it. He doesn’t believe Zag would leave without saying goodbye. He did it once before, but things are different now. Thanatos knows they’re different now.

He perches at his alcove and watches, from a distance, as the souls trickle out from the Pool. Why is he so on edge over this? Does it just seem wrong to him, the god of death, for someone of the Underworld to take up such a rare long stint of vitality?

_I’ll see you later, he said._

It is wrong. It’s wrong and strange for Zagreus, who shakes off deaths like battle bruises and comes strolling back into the House with trinkets to share, to suddenly stop dying. To not come home. There is always mercy to be found in a land of death, and none in a land of ice.

Thanatos doesn’t know how long he stays there in his quiet corner of the House, as he wrestles with the nerves trying to get the better of him. There is a fear now, rising from the dark, that he has waited too long already. That there was a chance to do something before but it’s too late now, and Zag could be anywhere. Like his mother before him, disappearing from her home, he could be completely out of reach.

But then—at last—there is a flicker at the edge of his awareness. It’s bright but far away, no more than an ember, sinking into cold depths and going out. Thanatos heaves a breath that catches and burns in his chest. He has never been so relieved, so scared, to feel a death before. This one is slow, this one is violent.

So Death moves. Fast.


	2. Chapter 2

The fiery laurels at the Prince's temples are nearly lost in all the new leaves twined around them. The vines have grown over him completely, running over his legs and his chest and coiling around each calloused finger. There is a delicate flower blooming in every eye socket of his ornamental skulls. They burst with life, fresh and vibrant shoots growing in peace.

The Prince is flat on his back, choking on blood.

Thanatos watches from the edge of the Prince's chamber, his robes spattered with blood and thorns. He will not make a scene. The words are unspilled acid on his tongue: _She can't do this. This is an heir of the three ruling gods._

If it had happened to anyone else there would be no words left unsaid. Zagreus would be a bright righteous anger in the dark House, demanding answers and actions. But the servants of the House are quiet, and Zagreus cannot speak. He heaves and thrashes and his mother has to hold him down.

"I'm keeping back the growth, to lessen the pain," she says. It is an admirable trait she shares with her son, to let her heart tremble open in her voice. “But I can’t get rid of them. The roots are too strong, they’re…in his blood, there’s thorns and poison sap…”

It’s been so long since the surface was green that Thanatos has nearly forgotten Demeter is queen of the harvest.

There is silence, but for a ragged sound in Zag's lungs like wind over scattered leaves. Mother Nyx speaks calm from the shadows.

“Will they not die, if the host is killed?”

“I found him broken through a frozen lake,” says Thanatos. He closes his eyes. He cannot speak his heart so easily. “Drowned. He was trying to get rid of them…but they were back by the time I got him here.”

“They will come back with him every time.” The Queen’s gaze is bleak, distant. “They won’t kill him. They don’t want him dead. They want to live off him—”

The Prince seizes, jerks, coughs up a bloody burst of green. The Queen grabs his face and whispers softly, strokes his hair made sticky with sap.

Thanatos thinks of Zagreus spending those long days on the surface just like this, paralyzed, fighting for death. When did he realize no one was coming to look for him? After everything he's done, all the efforts he's made for the people around him, for him to lie in the snow _alone_...for a moment Death himself feels faint. And he wants to scream I'm sorry, I'm sorry I didn't believe and you suffered, I'm sorry for my stupid pride, I'm _sorry_...! But it's not like Zag can hear him now.

In a ripple of starlight, Mother Nyx glides over to the bedside and extends a hand. The Prince's breath slows, barely, a hard laboring in and out in place of tortured gasps.

"To sleep through this would be as impossible as death, I think," the Night murmurs. "But I can darken his senses...at least for a time."

"This is my doing!" The Queen’s voice hitches. She is shaking nearly as much as her son. "I cannot hide any longer, I, I have to go back to her, I have to beg her to stop—"

"Your majesty." Thanatos is calmer than he expected. It’s strange how the deepest, coldest rage can do that. "Please, stay here with your son. You have servants to manage these matters of the House for you."

The Prince's mother and his own look up at him—such different expressions for the same surprise. The Queen’s eyes are wide, rimmed with tears and with hope, half of Zag looking back at him and too much to bear. It’s the Night’s gaze that he returns. Nyx is grim and calculating, and she understands him.

“Go well and wise, my son,” she says.

“I will, Mother Nyx.” With no more to be said, he leaves. He pretends he does not see his mother standing tall, one hand laid gentle over the shuddering Prince to cover his eyes, the other drawing close the Queen and her tears into veils of darkness.

The House of the Dead is as silent as the dead should be. There’s not a wandering shade in sight. The very walls, carved out by his mother’s hands, seem to be waiting. The Underworld knows that an attack between gods can be nothing but the start of something unspeakable.

Only the little gorgon, who normally steers far clear of Thanatos, is a flash of movement in his periphery. The frantic little ball, waiting and watching in a corner, gasps and vanishes in the rafters. She’s already cleaned up the thin trail of blood leading from the Pool of Styx to the Prince’s chamber. Thanatos still feels the fresh memory on his skin: Zag's weight in his arms, face pressed in the hollow of his neck, the stick of his cold sweat. That blazing burn at the core of him gone cold...

“Thanatos.” A low voice like the drag of claws brings him back. He turns to find the Fury behind him, leaning against the wall of the Prince’s chamber. Her arms are crossed, whip held at the ready.

“You know the surface. You’re off to do something about this, I hope,” she says. It’s not a request.

“That’s the idea.” His resolve is the stone of these walls. There’s only one path ahead, and damn all consequences. It’s only in front of her that he is uncertain for a moment. “Megaera, if I were to ask you to…stay here, be with him while I can’t…”

“You would be making very personal assumptions about the nature of what he and I have, yes,” she says, quick and biting. Thanatos only waits, and she looks away. “I will. You don’t have to ask.”

He relaxes. Then he tightens the grip on his blade.

“I’m going to stop it, Meg,” he says. “I will. I promise.”

She levels him with an expectant, unimpressed stare.

“Be careful, Than,” she says. “I've got this whole thing about oathbreakers.”

She doesn’t smile when she says it. He doesn’t blame her. They’re both the type of person to leave the good cheer to someone else. Thanatos moves on.

The silence in the great hall is broken by a single, high-pitched whine when he enters it. The vicious hound of Hell sits with all his heads piled dolefully between his paws. None of the eyes are on Thanatos, but he gets the feeling anyhow that even Cerberus now expects something from him in all this.

The great hound’s master ignores him completely. The King is at his throne, dark and unmoving as a burial mound. He sits rigid, looking over his scrolls, and the very air around him feels deadly and untouchable. He will not go to his despairing wife, or to his son imprisoned to life and agony. He is master of this realm, and none may ever challenge that.

Thanatos floats to the middle of the hall, to the very center of the King’s field of view, before he vanishes completely. It is a last word unspoken. Hades surely knows where he is going, who he is going to. It’s a last shred of fealty, a chance for his lord to reach up his thoughts and demand he return at once from this insubordination. For the first time in centuries, Thanatos is unsure if he will listen.

But he supposes he’ll never know. He materializes on the surface and wanders its wastes, and Hades never calls him back.


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hey y'all this chapter got a little bit more into possessive-controlling-parent territory than i expected so i wanted to leave a warning for that here! you can skip it entirely if you like and move onto the ending. be safe be happy ily

When he loops back around in his search, Thanatos finds a garden near where a mortal river becomes the Styx. Or, he thinks it might have been a garden. The winter looks recently arrived here, rows of something in the ground now only furrowed lines of building snow. The thatch is sliding in icicles off the abandoned little cottage.

A great figure lingers there in the snowfall, an empty cornucopia slung across her back.

“My lord Thanatos.” She doesn’t turn around. “This is an unexpected visit.”

He restrains himself for now, for all he wants to lash out at the lightness in her tone. As if there would be no answer for what she’s done.

“You are surprised the Underworld would seek you out, my lady Demeter?” he says, forcing calm.

“Oh, no. It’s just amusing that Hades would send Death to me, to bargain for a life.” She turns to him, smooth and dignified. “Shall we get right to it and discuss our terms?”

The realization hits like a physical blow that she doesn’t feel a shred of regret for what she’s done. The gods of Olympus truly believe they can do no wrong. Right now Zagreus is suffocating on himself, only held together by the very roots that are shredding him apart. And there is nothing in Demeter’s eyes but _triumph._

But she does look taken aback when the pale sunlight dims. The air rings low and hollow.

“There are no terms.” Thanatos is quiet. “You're going to let him go.”

She is caught off guard, but not for long. An icy wind whips through the garden and the light returns, as vicious on the eyes as going snowblind.

“You ought to know far better than to speak to me like that.” Demeter looks down her nose at him. “Remember what I am to you. I am the earthly balance between life and death. I am the goddess of sacred law. Your Prince is not exempt from divine punishment.”

“And what is his crime, exactly?” Thanatos snaps.

“He stole my daughter down to Hell.”

He stills. Demeter flashes a smile.

“Oh, yes,” she says. “I saw it. I finally found her, you see. You could never understand my joy, to have searched for her for untold countings of the sun and then to sense her nearby at last! But by the time I reached this hovel, who should I see but the little sprout I have offered so much of my aid in his quest? Treacherous like his father, I suppose. He’s not what I thought he was at all. He went right back the way he came, down the river Styx, taking my daughter with him…”

She looks to the door of the empty cottage.

“I was so close,” she whispers, as if something in her is about to thaw. But then she hardens, turning back an impassive face. “Rest assured, when he dared return up here I gave him a chance to explain himself. But he would not. He would say nothing of my daughter, and gave only pleadings and platitudes—as if he were in any sort of position to be offering peace. I had no patience for it. So…now he really _is_ my little sprout.”

He suddenly feels heavy, very nearly sinks right out of the air. It’s easy to picture Zagreus, bound to his word but still trying to talk to the goddess, trying to make things right. Thanatos wonders if he was still talking when the vines sprang up and sank their veins into his, choked the kindness right out of his throat.

So then, she knows. But she does not know everything. Would it have made any difference to her, if she’d realized she was setting this divine punishment upon her own grandson? Thanatos won’t know. Even now, it’s not his secret to give. 

"Why so grim, Thanatos?" Demeter asks, mild and unconcerned. Happy to have them all at her mercy. "After all, I've made your job a little easier. I always thought it was unbecoming of a god to die, especially so often. Now I've made him properly immortal."

He feels something dangerous pulse through him. Smiling slightly, she turns back to survey the garden.

"Yes, I think I will keep him that way,” she continues. “Tell me, how do my little ones fare? Growing well? You need not worry, they will care for him. A steady cycle between blood and roots can go on for eternity—though he will surely go mad long before that, I’m sure. Yet even after we have all forgotten who he used to be, he will live on quite well, even if he drifts through some unknown pit of Chaos—”

She pauses. Her eyebrows are raised, gaze lowered, to examine the long blade held curved around her neck. Thanatos has to clench his teeth against his shaking.

"Let. Him. _Go."_

They do not move. Her eyes flick back up to him.

“Who is he to you?” she asks, soft, maybe even incredulous. But the answer is none of her business. When he says nothing she returns her attention to his waiting scythe. This is not the moment he expects to hear pity from her.

“Stow your blade, Thanatos,” she says. “That edge is forged for mortal souls. You are Death, and I am Life. We cannot touch each other.”

She’s lying. She’s lying, she’s bluffing, she’s afraid…but she’s not. He knew this, deep down. With a snarl of frustration he spins away from her, letting the scythe arc through. Here on the surface she remains solid, and the blade passes through like smoke.

“I am wholly surprised at you, my lord Thanatos,” she says, chin lifted high. “So emotional over a single soul! It’s quite unlike you.”

He barely hears her. He is watching the falling snow, holding back his shaking, powerless. What is he supposed to do? He came up here with his rage and his hurt and his fear, and his blade cannot touch her. Not this, not to Zag, not Zag…

What else can he do? Why the hell is he the one here, being useless? By rights it should be Hades, defending his realm and his own damn son. He of the three ruling gods could easily overpower this goddess if he cared to bother.

Perhaps not, though. In the Underworld, death is always the first solution to a problem. It’s only Zagreus who ever tries talking before coming to blows. Hades is nothing like that, much as his son might bitterly push. Perhaps that old god would be right here where Thanatos is, trying to bring death where it has no hold.

The thought snags on him, stops him. What can he do, that the lord of the dead can’t?

Zagreus always tries talking. It’s not like there’s anything else left. He pulls in a breath of frigid air.

"He's not...treacherous, Demeter," he manages, eyes on the snow. "He's what you thought he was. You're doing this to someone who is...very loved."

It's the closest he can get to being direct about it. And yet when he looks up, the shake of her head is so patronizing.

“You shouldn’t trouble yourself over him, Thanatos,” she says. “Through all these ages, you know, I have always thought of you and myself as two sides to one leaf. Death is despised, and Life is taken for granted. There is no one who will care for us, even if we bother to care in turn.”

His temper flares. Oh, he’ll try talking, but Death can be cruel.

"Is that what you think?" he says. "Did your daughter make that clear to you?"

She glares. "You have no right to speak of her."

He scoffs. "I’m surprised, my lady Life. So emotional over a single soul! What, did she never look for you the way you looked for her?"

“How _dare_ you speak of what you do not know.” She is not so lofty and above him now. There is a crack of ice somewhere in the frozen ground nearby. “I will not be manipulated, lord of Death. I am telling you plainly that you are to give me my daughter, if your Prince is ever to breathe air instead of blood again.”

“And I am telling _you,_ ” he spits back, “to ask yourself the question you don’t want to ask. You say your daughter was taken. Well then, if we were to let her free, would she come to you?”

Demeter’s eyes on him are wide, frosted over. He has no idea if he’s making things better or worse.

“You and I are similar, Demeter, it’s true,” he says, softer. “We can be cruel, both life and death. But I’m trying to be more than that. There’s someone who thinks I’m capable of more. You once had someone like that too, I think.”

Silence. The snow falls. By the Night, what more is he supposed to do?

“You think she wants this?” he says, urgent now, pressing forward. “Is she the type of person to appreciate this horrible thing you’re doing, supposedly for her sake?”

“What else must I do, if she won’t talk to me?” the goddess finally cries out.

“Think about why that might be!” he fires back. “Have you ever listened?”

The snow is picking up into a storm, whirling around them in the wind. The goddess is quiet. For the first time Thanatos notices her hand, hanging at her side, clutching a length of green ribbon.

“What must I do, then?” she asks, bitterly. “What must I do to be worthy of my own child? What won’t she tell me? I _want_ to talk, I want to understand…”

Yes, they have very much in common. He sees now that she is as desperate for her beloved as he is. But Thanatos hasn’t gone around eviscerating any innocent bystanders over it, so his sympathy is in short supply.

“Maybe it’s too late for that,” he says. “Maybe not. But this isn’t the way, my lady.”

Demeter inhales, draws herself up, a proud queen in a storm of her own making. But she slides a glance his way.

“Would you be willing to speak to her in my stead?” she asks. “I would accept a message at this time. She need not come to me.”

Thanatos snorts. “I’m used to being confused with Hermes, but—”

He stops. Far, deep in the ground below, something lurking and ancient shifts. It’s a movement like footsteps unseen and unheard, and he realizes that someone else has been listening this entire time. There is a command from his lord, sudden and clear in his head. It’s a permission granted.

_Tell her._

The first thing Death feels is utter annoyance. Really? This is all it takes? This clumsy, spiteful little conversation of his is more than the god of the dead can muster for himself? But apparently Demeter’s answers were enough for the King and Queen below.

Demeter is watching him, eyes narrowed. She’s aware that something has passed her by. Thanatos steels himself.

“I’m afraid I cannot disturb your daughter at this time,” he says. He gives her a pointed look. “She’s busy tending to her son.”

For a moment, there is no reaction at all. The storm spins unchanged—but then, it stops all at once. The snow hangs frozen in the air. Demeter stares at him, stricken.

“You lie,” she says. He says nothing. She lets out one short, high, disbelieving laugh. “My daughter has a _son—_ ”

“The Prince.” He nods.

“But he has a father!”

“Two parents is common these days, I’m told,” he answers, deadpan. “I suppose you saw those eyes of his and never gave them a second thought?”

The frozen ground cracks and roars. Thanatos looks down, blinks, at the massive black roots that have suddenly twisted up below his floating feet. They pierce right through him, but he wavers in their grasp like smoke. He lifts up a mocking, apologetic smile.

“I have no blood for your roots, my lady,” he says.

Demeter is helpless, incensed, as powerless to touch him as he is to touch her. Maybe this is why he was the one permitted to seek her out.

Thanatos glides to one side, out of the roil of roots, brushes the dirt from his robes. The goddess stands in silence, barely paying him any mind now. She stares into nothing, stunned. The snow has been forgotten and resumes its gentle fall. Thanatos can’t keep back his anger and impatience for much longer. Let her accept it or not. Some can’t afford to wait for her decision.

Then, caught off guard, his breath catches in his chest. He senses it, a quick and painless death. Roots through a heart, an ember snuffed out. A suffering ended.

He stares at the goddess, but she has turned away.

“You tell my Kore…and your master,” she says, her voice brittle in the cold, “they know where to find me. I will be waiting to speak with them.”

He wants to vanish right there on the spot, wants to ensure with his own eyes that Zag is freed and restored by the Styx. But he cannot let her end this so easily.

“You realize that this guarantees nothing,” he warns. “She can reach out to you or not, but it’s her choice. If it were me…I would never forgive what you’ve done.”

She glowers at him, but she does not argue.

“Thank you ever so much for your feigned concern, Thanatos,” she says. “Now go. You got what you wanted. Our paths in life and death will cross again, far sooner than either of us would care for, I am sure.”

He doesn’t need telling twice, and he doesn’t look back. He goes to the Styx, he becomes its rushing current, and he is gone.


	4. Chapter 4

From the Pool of Styx, the House of Hades is a passing blur. Thanatos is brought to a halt only when he sees a floating figure emerge from the Prince’s chamber ahead of him. Of all people, it’s his brother. Hypnos bobs amiably back into the great hall, stretching his arms high and languid over his head.

“Wow! Nasty business in there, huh? Don’t worry, though, looks like I took care of it for ya.” He grins at Thanatos, yawns. “No need to thank me, just doing my job. Hoo, I am _beat…”_

Thanatos doesn’t trust his voice to work. He barely understands what his brother is saying. He glides past him and into the corridor.

He hears voices through the archway to the garden. The first one is a fearsome thing—a wild, relieved, furious sobbing. The other sounds strange without its usual contempt for everyone and everything. As Thanatos dips for the entryway to the left he hears from among the pomegranates, deep and earnest and very uncomfortable, “Come now, my dear, you’ll make yourself ill…he’s all right, it’s all passed…”

Mother Nyx is gone, the bedchamber left draped in soothing shadows. Thanatos has to come closer, is afraid to come closer…but then his rarely used heart leaps into his throat.

There is Zagreus, head fallen to the side, plunged deep into sleep. The work of Hypnos. It’s as if the vines were never there, no rash of poison ivy or slash of thorns upon his skin. All that’s left is a pinched look to his face, deeper shadows under his eyes. He’s completely spent. It will take more than a death or two to make up for the toll this has taken on him.

It will take even more to make it up to him, for letting any of this happen.

A sharp, forbidding figure sits perched at the bedside. Meg’s hand rests on the Prince’s chest, measuring its steady rise and fall. She looks up, over her shoulder at Thanatos.

“Welcome back,” she says. In the Fury’s own way, there is affection in her eyes. Gratitude. Mostly, though, evident from the tightness of her shoulders, she is ill at ease with tenderness. Thanatos has no idea what his own expression must be, but the look she’s giving him in turn is clear: _I am begging you not to have a breakdown in front of me._

Death would rather die. He turns and glides back out of the room; he still has to officially report back.

He continues further down the corridor, pauses in the archway to the garden. There are even more pomegranates in here now, fresh seedlings springing up in blossom around the Queen in her tumult. Her face snaps up from her hands when Thanatos appears, tearstained and more emotional than he’s equipped to handle. He looks to the King, stiffly staring back at him over his wife in his arms. His scowl dares him to say something, but Thanatos couldn’t care less about ruining his lord’s gruesome reputation. He’s tired, and he thinks he’s had enough of Zag’s family both above and below the surface.

“Your turn,” he says to them both, flatly. Then he is gone.

Meg is gone, too, when he returns to the bedchamber. He hovers over the sleeping Prince, silent. All the sickly worry and anger coursing through him ebbs away, slowly, with each deep breath he takes. It’s over. He will personally make sure the House lets nothing like it happen again.

He reaches down and eases the laurels out of Zag’s hair, sets them aside where they won’t scorch. He removes some of the larger, impractical, decorative skulls. He runs a gentle hand down his lover's face, lets it come to rest against his neck. He looks up and watches the shafts of light through the nearby doorway, the endless drift of glimmering Underworld ash. His mind is completely blank, save for the pulse he feels under his thumb. It’s a treasured, familiar burn, the searing beat of hellfire.

After a time he feels that same burn in roughened fingers brushing over his own.

“Hey, Than.” The voice is a bare whisper. The chest heaves one wet, clearing cough. It seems the purge of the Styx didn’t quite get everything.

“So,” the Prince says, mildly. “Death by salad…”

Thanatos rolls his eyes all the way up to the dim rafters. He leans his scythe against the wall and shifts himself onto the bed.

“Go back to sleep, Zagreus.” He settles the Prince’s head in his lap.

“Mm. I’ll sleep when I’m—”

“Yeah, yeah, we all get it.”

Zag grins, still with a bit of a wince to it. He adjusts himself, sinks heavy against Thanatos, sighs in peace. He is asleep again in moments, one hand still reached up toward the fingers smoothing back his hair. He is whole again, freed from the most ruthless bonds of Life.

Death curls watchful over him, and stays there.


End file.
